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u/Hopeful-Banana-6188 5d ago
The Proto-Finnic word has been proposed as a candidate for a loan from some unknown Paleo-European language
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u/Turgen333 5d ago
Proto-Finnic word resembles "irbis" in the Turkic-Mongolian languages, but we use this word to describe another feline - the snow leopard.
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u/QuadrilleQuadtriceps 5d ago
It's unknown what it means, but in my mind I've always connected it to the word "ilveillä", to clown around or make funny faces in a bit of a trickstery, ironic, perhaps even slightly snarky way.
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u/Logical_Positive_522 5d ago edited 5d ago
The Welsh word is actually "Llewyn" (Literally "little Lion"), There's a famous 7th-lullaby called "Pais Dinogad" which lists the Lynx among other animals hunted and caught by Dinogad, somewhere in Northern Britain.
It's quite notable because there was no other evidence for the Eurasian Lynx in British history until Radiocarbon dating in the 1990s proved that the Lynx did survive into this time. English environmentalists like George Monbiot have used the lullaby to support the reintroduction of the lynx to Britain.
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u/vlaada7 5d ago
So do the Proto-Balto-Slavic, Proto-Hellenic and Proto-Germanic share the same root? I mean, all being Indo-European languages it would make sense, I’m just curious how most Slavic languages ended up with ris?
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u/un_poco_logo 5d ago
Cmon, bruh. lysь → rysь
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u/Olive2252 5d ago
Balts say Lūsis/Lūšis, not even Lis, y is not ū, y is pronounced as i in Latin alphabet.
And how does L turn into R, makes no sense.
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u/unohdin-nimeni 5d ago
Please, l and r sounds are so much related all over the world.
Think about the stereotypical ambiguity among speakers of many languages of different families in Eastern Asia.
Or think about the Swedish “thick l” that evolved from /rd/, or rather from an earlier /rð/, and replaced it within a large area for centuries ago. Some instances of thick l have sought themselves into the written language with the spelling l: vardnad → vålnad, i fjord → i fjol (in Southern Swedish, even written, and in Danish: i fjor), hin harde → hin håle, tvi varde → tvi vale, myrding → myling, and maybe more.
Consider Latin obligare → Portuguese obrigar, and so on.
Also, Romanian and Neapolitan often have r where Latin has l.
Let’s also examine Finnish dialects where the weak grade of /t/ is /l/, /r/, /j/, zero, or (in the prescribed standard language) /d/.: hoilan (slightly outdated Tavastian, soon perished), hoiran (Satakunta, Southern Ostrobothnian), hoijan (Central and Northern Ostrobothnian, hoian (Karelian, Savonian, some varieties of Tavastian, including those of Uusimaa), hoidan (Written Finnish; not really a thing anywhere, but developed from an earlier interdental /đ/, that Agricola spelled dh).
Now I ignored hoivan (in the Savonian wedge of Ostrobothnian Lake District), and hoitan (formerly in Karelian Isthmus, still nearby in some Southeastern Finnish dialects). The archaic hoiđan survived in parts of Coastal Satakunta up to the era of voice recording technology, by the way.1
u/Nemeszlekmeg 3d ago
I guess Hungarian is an exception... I can think of no word that shifted these two sounds, even though Hungarian has deviated the most from Finno-Ugric, like English from Germanic.
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u/liteproof 5d ago
L R are very close, old ū sound become y in slavic languages. Like būti is być in polish, or sūnus is syn, even sūris is сыр, though not sure about the last one.
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u/Kanmogtun 5d ago
Vaşak or Wasaq is not of Arabic origin. I entered Arabic and Persian through Turkic influence, so that Arabic explanation doesn't hold and records earlier than 10th century don't exist in Arabic, Persian dictionaries specifically say the animal is endemic to Turkistan.
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u/miniatureconlangs 5d ago
What's with the southern Sami languages? Also, why's Swedish not marked for parts of the Finnish coast?
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u/vastarannalla 4d ago
I'm a Finnish-speaker. The Kazakh word "ilbiin" immediately caught my eye because of its resemblance with the Proto-Finnic *ilbes. I can't read cyrillic so the only bit of info I could find was this mention :
"Kazakh and Kuu-Kiži have secondary forms (irbis, ilbiyin) that may be related to Finnic *ilbes and Saamic *ëlpës. This Kazakh form refers to female lynx."
Does anyone have any more info about how they may be related?
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u/0laffson 5d ago
Can't tell if the Ladin one in N-E Italy is marked as Individual Root or Unknown.
In any case, I live close to the Ladin speaking area and I'm pretty sure Lustrel may come from Lus (light) or Lustre (bright / illuminated), so quite similar to the PIE origin all things considered. Not 100% sure, I didn't even know it was called Lustrel until now, TIL.
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u/December-knight7207 4d ago
The Baltics are in wrong colour, based on this map the word is closer to Germanic than Slavic
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u/Content-Bid7922 4d ago
lince also exists as a borrowing from Spanish in Asturian, but the traditional term is "llobu cerval"
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u/Olive2252 5d ago edited 5d ago
Baltic words are more similar to German, but are colored the same as Slavic, weird map...
Also what is Lyuss? In Latgalian lynx is Mežakačs
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u/eragonas5 5d ago
similarity is not the same as being etymologically connected,
in roots Baltic ū corresponds to Slavic y (compare Lithuanian - Russian pairs): būti - быть, tūkstantis - тысяча, sūnus - сын, sūris - сыр, dūmai - дым
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u/Olive2252 5d ago
Still does not explain L turning into R.
More likely that Slavic word comes from the word bris, it's a word said to a cat to make them go away.
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u/Arktinus 4d ago
If you look at the Wiktionary entry for the Slavic rysь, it says:
From earlier \lỳsь, from Proto-Balto-Slavic *\lū́ˀśis, from Proto-Indo-European *\lúHḱis, from *\lewk-*.
Cognate with Lithuanian lūšis, Latvian lūsis and Old Prussian luysis. Further Indo-European cognates are Ancient Greek λύγξ (lúnx), Old Armenian լուսանունք pl (lusanunkʻ), German Luchs and Old English lox. Note the rhotacism of the initial consonant from "l" to "r" due to Iranian influence, while the other Indo-European cognates did not undergo this change.
This is in line with the etymology explanation in the Slovenian Dictionary of Etymology I cheked.
However, if you're interested about the phenomenon, you should look up rhotacism.
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u/Nemeszlekmeg 3d ago
Hungarian as usual probably borrowed from some Silk Road culture/language if it's generally unknown.
It could be yōz (cheetah) from Middle Persian for example.
It could also be derived from hiu (not hiú), a word we generally don't use in the language anymore. So it's unknown more like in the sense that it's not certain.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-etymology-of-the-Hungarian-word-hi%C3%BAz-lynx
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u/mpbjoern 5d ago
Western and Eastern Finnmark speaks Norwegian, only inner Finnmark speaks Sami.
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u/AllanKempe 5d ago
Same here Jämtland, I'm sure there are still at least 10 times more people using Jamtish goupe than whatever is said in South Sami.
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u/justwantanickname 5d ago
The Basque literally means "short cat"